Book Review: Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman

Bringing Up Bebe is written by an American mother living in France. She is intrigued by the difference in behavior between French and American children (read: American kids throw their food and French kids don't) and begins investigating French parenting. This book is about her discoveries.

The last thing many moms want to do is read a dry, preachy parenting book during nap time. The few nuggets of wisdom aren't worth the horrible guilt, self-judgement, and overanalyzing. Also, I like to think that underneath the supermom exterior there is a real human being who might just want to read something that isn't about sippy cups and sleep training.

But I heartily recommend this book to all moms - and less heartily I recommend it to those who aren't moms, because it is that interesting and well written...though it may not be as funny for you. Unless you find power struggles with beings one quarter of your size amusing.

This book is far from preachy and - best of all - it is hilarious. Well-written, self-deprecating, honest, and anecdotal, I found myself wanting to read this book. I tore through it in about two days (usually reading while I was nursing).

My favorite thing about this book though is that it opened my eyes to how cultural our ideas of parenting are. Most of what I took for granted as some universal agreement about what a good mother looks like is actually unique to us Americans. It took a lot of pressure off of me to be this so-called perfect mother. Realizing that the perfect mother looks very, very different in other cultures revealed that maybe there isn't a perfect mother. Maybe all these things that I felt like I had to do (go on playdates; go to story time; breastfeed my child; stay at home; alternately work a billion hours and look like I do it with ease; prep my child for college at the age of one; never take care of myself - always the baby first!) were actually just cultural ideals that I could reject, not a solemn, ethical parenting code.

There may be some moments in the book where French parenting is a bit idealized. But I can't really blame the author for this when babies in France magically sleep through the night around 3 months for no reason that French parents can recall other than that the moms had to return to work and "the baby knew mom needed her sleep." Meanwhile, American parents are still sleep deprived several months after the baby is born and often past baby's first year.

Maybe somehow our parenting ideals are working against us? After reading this book, as well as All Joy and No Fun, I'm starting to think that may be the case. And while I have no intention of making any sweeping claims about the right way to parent (I really don't believe there is one right way), I do intend to go easy on myself and let myself parent the best I can, sans cultural commentary.

Too much reading?

Here is a question:

Can you read too much? Is there such a thing?

Isn't that sort of like doing "too much charity work" or being "too nice" or "too pretty"?

Reading is not only fun, it's educational and whatnot. Who ever says "You learn too much! Stop learning things."

No one, that's who.

But then, people say, "Everything in moderation."

Does that mean I have to be moderate in my reading? Is it selfish of me to read? If the world was ending and I just sat on my couch and read would I be crossing a line?

I really want to know. Please tell me what you think.

The Alot -- A Beast of Mythic Fame

No Blogspot, this is not a typo. I know a lot is not one word... I distinctly remember banging my head against the table while grading 7th, 9th, and 10th grade papers. "Why is it so difficult?" I would groan, circling yet another miserable alot in yet another miserable essay.

Enter Hyperbole and a Half. This blog traipsed into my life with a solution that was so entertaining,  true, and obvious that I wondered where it had been all my life.

The beautiful and brilliant and talented and GENIUS blogger (no, I don't know this person. No, she did not pay me to write this. Yes, she is that awesome) over at Hyperbole and a Half introduced me to the ALOT. Here is a picture she drew of the Alot:

This image was drawn by Allie Brosh. Click here to visit her blog.

I taught my kids about the Alot monster and they stopped using alot and started using a lot overnight. Every once in a while one or two kids would revert back, but I like to think it was on purpose now and not because they didn't know any better.

I hope I've intrigued you. If so, click here to read about this wondrous creature and put some socks on because you're about to laugh them off. And I don't want to know what would happen if you started laughing your socks off and DIDN'T HAVE ANY SOCKS ON!

Also a word to the lazy reader, who just can't seem to drag that little mouse arrow over to the link and click on it...because then you'd have to wait for a page to load and you don't have the time, and who knows what it might do to your internet tabs (I know; I've been there - will it open a new tab or navigate away from this page? What if it isn't funny? Why didn't this person just paste the whole story here so I don't have to click on links all the time?). But I must insist. You must go learn about the ways of the Alot. You will thank me in the comments if you do.

Also please share with all your teacher friends. It will save their forehead from a perpetual bruise.

Harper Lee's New Novel...Please contain your excitement.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time a few years ago when I had to teach it to my sophomore class. I was (and still am) in awe of Atticus - not because he was the perfect parent, but because he was so human and natural with his children. I remember thinking that if I ever became a parent, I wanted to be like Atticus. Except I wanted my children to call me mom, not by my first name.

A few months ago I heard the delightful news that Harper Lee had been harboring a sequel, a book that was actually written before To Kill a Mockingbird, but which takes place after the events in To Kill a Mockingbird.

The good news is we don't have to wait too long either (I mean other than the 55 years we had to wait already...) -- the book is scheduled to be published in July.

For more info, listen to or read this snippet from All Things Considered.

So just how excited are you about this? Let me know in the comments.

Ode to Imagination

The other day I took my friend's kids to the park. They are ages 4 and 2 and Baby Melon is almost 10 months now. I feared for myself. But, like all good warriors, I strapped on my armor (or in this case my baby carrier), made good use of my pockets, and dove into the fray.

It was great actually. The oldest is right at that age of make believe where you don't need anything to play other than a wide open space for lots of running and falling over dead. During one of his make believe escapades, he raced out of the jungle gym yelling, "Quick, we've got to get away from the bad guys!" Another little boy who was probably around the same age looked at his mom with sudden anxiety: "Bad guys?" he whimpered. "No, no," I looked at the mother apologetically, "these are just pretend." The little boy looked relieved. Meanwhile my friend's son had fallen over "dead" in the dirt.

I was delighted to see that someone in the world still only needs their imagination and their pointer finger (for a gun, of course) in order to enjoy themselves. I so rarely see that anymore, which is probably because I don't spend a lot of time with children that age, but also because of the evil television. I say that jokingly. I love TV and movies, especially good TV and movies. I'm really not super anti-TV. I'm just anti-only-TV.

I've been rereading the Anne of Green Gables series and Anne has imagination to spare. She has so much imagination that it makes me feel like a dull lump of reality-focused clay. Not only do I want "kids these days" to be more like Anne, I want to be more like Anne.

Why does Anne have so much imagination and I seem to have so little? What can I do to be more imaginative? After considering this for some time, I decided that Anne's main inspirations for imagination include people, books or poems, and nature.

Not even the Anne girl can just imagine things out of thin air. She needs a spark, some ideas rolling around in her head to begin with. My little friend on the playground needed to read stories about bad guys in order to make up his own. As Tozer pointed out, "We learn by using what we already know as a bridge, over which we pass to the unknown. It is not possible for the mind to crash suddenly past the familiar into the unfamiliar." I would add that we imagine by using what we already know as a bridge from the real to the unreal. For Anne, the starting point for her imagination is always a combination of people, stories, and nature.

These are often things that we don't let into our lives. I live in an apartment complex, where my view of the sky is blocked by a large hotel and a call center. When I drive I listen to music or the radio, when I'm bored I look at my phone (there's an app for boredom). I do read a substantial amount, to be fair, but I know lots people don't have the time. But Anne had the time. Anne looked at the sky, not her phone; Anne looked at people and if she didn't talk to them, she imagined things about them; if she did talk to them, then she imagined things about them later based on what they had said. I'm going to try to be more like Anne in the hopes of resurrecting my imagination.

So this is my exhortation: Feed your imagination, lest it die. Give it whatever it needs: people, books, and nature, or stranger fare than these. It is imperative that we do this -- otherwise we will be left scared on the jungle gym while others fly by us in a rush of enthusiasm for things unseen.

What sparks your imagination?

An Update in Reading

This month has been so busy that routine, along with all of the wonderful things that routine maintains including laundry and blog posting, has disappeared from my life completely.
Not surprisingly, I've still managed to read a few books. Because that's the second to the last thing to go (the last thing would obviously be breathing).
So here is a quick survey of my reading last month:

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, 4 stars. This is the first comic book/graphic novel that I've ever read! Reading comic books is difficult for me. My mind keeps trying to create the setting, the mood, to draw the characters and it gropes for information about these details - "Why is there so much dialogue! Why won't they stop and tell me where they are and what the air smells like and what the weather is doing?" Then I remember that it's all in a picture behind the words. So weird. But eventually I got into a good rhythm and didn't have to remind myself to slow down and look at the pictures. When I finished this collection, I had a few thoughts: That was a weird place to stop the story. Holy cannoli that was gruesome and creepy. There might have been a few sections that were pure genius. I wasn't instantly enthusiastic about it. I had to let it stew in my brain. I had to strain out the gruesome (I'm not prudish usually about violence, but for some reason, probably since there were pictures, it creeped me out) and absorb the great. Because there were two issues (I think they are called issues?) that Blew. My. Mind. One of them was an issue that switches to the point of view of a very minor character, a waitress at a diner who is a writer. She sees her customers as fuel for her writing. That's all I will say, but if you only read one issue, that would be the one to read. Neil Gaiman is extraordinary. If I was still teaching, I would seriously consider adding a lesson where we analyzed one or two issues of this text.

Anne of Green Gables, 5 billion stars. (The exaggeration is in in honor of Anne, of course.) I never realized that L.M. Montgomery was one of my favorite authors until a week ago. I got a sudden urge to reread Anne of Green Gables and now all I want to do is read Anne of Green Gables or watch Anne of Green Gables. Also, I plan on moving to Prince Edward Island. Seriously. My husband said he would do it.

Carry On Warrior, 3 stars. I can't enjoy nonfiction as much as fiction and so I always find it difficult to rate and recommend and talk about at all. Also, I have a weird voice in my head that is super judgmental when I read nonfiction. I haven't the slightest idea why. Anyway, this book was pretty hilarious, especially the anecdotes about the author and her children. I know it's cliche of me to enjoy reading about how a child threw a temper tantrum at Target just because I too may one day get to experience that joy, but what can I say, it's funnier on this side of things. The author of this text, Glennon Doyle Melton, is well known for her brutal honesty. I found this very refreshing and challenging. Sure, she had some ideas that were strange and that I disagreed with (which the voice in my head demands that I tell you), but I'd totally be friends with her. I read a review on Goodreads that said the prose was terrible. It wasn't. It was really funny. It was blog-prose or thinking-out-loud prose. But it worked for the book stylistically.

What are you reading currently?

"I don't care how well it's written, I only care if it's a good story."

These words were uttered by a man I spent an entire day with, but will likely never see again. Mr. Greenberg was a teacher at summer school and I was taking classes to get my teaching credential. He graciously allowed me to sit and observe in his classroom. I took away two things that day that have stuck with me: an interest in Doctor Who, and the quote mentioned above.

We were talking books during one of the breaks the kids get. Of course we were talking books. I was an English major on my way to becoming an English teacher. He was a writer and an English teacher. It was only natural that this discussion occupied our time. I don't know what prompted this comment from Mr. Greenberg. I think I was flexing my English-major muscles and made a negative comment about a new release that was getting lots of love from everyone.

So I was a little chastised when he said, "I don't care how well a book is written; I only care if it's a good story."

To this day I can't decide if I agree with him. I've read some books with an interesting story and awful prose, and some books with beautiful prose and a yawn-inducing plot. I prefer the books that have both an interesting story and beautiful prose. But I see what he was saying. Some books seem to be written for English majors - who else would willingly sit through Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49? If you haven't read that gem, I can't even summarize the story for you because nothing really happens. I'm not kidding. There is a girl who is crazy and believes she has uncovered a conspiracy. She runs around discovering or imagining or projecting proof of this conspiracy. At the end of the book, you don't know if the conspiracy is real or if she is imagining it because she is crazy. But the prose is excellent. Very artistic and whatnot.

When I'm honest with myself, I don't want to read books like The Crying of Lot 49. I want to read books like The Lord of the Rings, or The Blue Castle, or Harry Potter, or anything by Mark Twain. Because those are really great stories.

Incidentally, they are also well written.

Which brings me to the other half of the equation: Books that are written poorly, but are great stories.

I'm reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo right now. (No spoilers, please, because I did just start it.) This novel has been raved about by tons of people, even fellow English teachers. Sadly, the prose is meh. True, this is quite possibly due to the translation, not the author himself. But it detracts from my experience. However riveted I am by the characters and the plot, the prose is awkwardly blunt, choppy, and has excessive chunks of exposition. So far, I am intrigued and I think I can safely say that I will really like it. But somehow the story doesn't feel complete without good, solid prose, perhaps a well-selected metaphor or a bit of elegant description.

So, Mr. Greenberg, I think I disagree with you. Story is arguably more important than how the story is told. But I'd say story is more like 60%, prose 40%, not story 100%, prose nil.

What do you think?